Original articles by academic faculty, librarians and other researchers.

Volume 11, Issue 2

In this issue: The first American vessel to reach exotic China sparks nationwide wonder; nineteenth-century Canadian blacks find their voice in the American press; and an unheralded hero from a forgotten American war.

, Professor of Early American History, Department of History, Salem State University

The Chinese themselves were very indulgent towards us, and happy in the contemplation of a new people, opening to view a fresh source of commerce to their extensive empire.—From the journal of Major Samuel Shaw, as reported in Fowle’s New-Hampshire Gazette, 27 May 1785, and other historical newspapers

To the calls and “huzzahs” of astonished merchants, sailors, and dockworkers, the American ship The Empress of China slipped into her berth along the wharves of New York’s East River on 11 May 1785. The Empress was the republic’s first Indiaman—the first American vessel to sail “eastward of Good Hope” into the waters of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. Fifteen months earlier, she had departed New York with a cargo of Appalachian ginseng and Spanish dollars. Now onlookers gaped to see the wares she had brought back from the East.

As soon as customs documents had been signed, ledgers and daybooks filled out, and cargo assigned to auction, the Empress’s business agent, Major Samuel Shaw, sent a hurried message to the corner of Great Dock and Broad Streets. It was here at Samuel Fraunces’s tavern that the U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs, John Jay, maintained his department office. Shaw believed it a matter of urgent business to frame the Empress’s journey to China as a historic achievement that catapulted the new republic into the community of civilized nations. Shaw himself captured the country’s sense of the significance of the voyage when he prefaced his letter to Jay with the words, “It becomes my duty to communicate to you . . . an account of the reception its citizens have met with, and the respect with which its flag has been treated in that distant region.”

Jennifer Harris, Associate Professor, English Language and Literature, University of Waterloo

In her time Charlotte Elizabeth Linden would have been called a “race woman.” From the 1890s to the mid-1910s, the Cleveland Gazette reported on her involvement in a wide array of African American causes. At various junctures she served as president of one of the many U.S. literary societies named after Phillis Wheatley; chair of committees for her church; state organizer of the “colored work” of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union; president of the City Federation of Women’s Clubs; representative for the Colored Knights of Pythias; and more. As Dr. Thomas William Burton wrote:

I admire a woman who delights in working with the hand as well as the head; who, when she works, has something to show for her labor; and wherever she may chance to be, can adapt herself to the surroundings, and there remain without assumption. These qualities we can find in the person of Mrs. Henry Linden, of Springfield, Ohio.

By all accounts, Linden would seem to fit firmly within the narrative of late nineteenth-century African American racial uplift, oriented to improving African American life in a way we also recognize as firmly national. Yet, in a self-published book of poetry, Linden included a poem titled “To the Queen of the British Government” in which she described herself as “a Canadian complete.”

During the recent bicentennial of the War of 1812, historians revisited America’s second war of independence in a spate of books that detailed the conflict on land, at sea, through cause and effect, and various other angles. One fact remains—the War of 1812, which lasted for two-and-a-half years, is as controversial and misunderstood today as it was in 1814. Often called “Mr Madison’s war” and even “Mr Jefferson’s war,” the War of 1812 remains fertile ground for historical research and analysis. In one 1983 work on the evolution of American newspapers in the years leading up to the War of 1812, Donald R. Avery concluded the war was the pivotal event in the shift of newspaper coverage from foreign to domestic news. This brief study demonstrates—through use of the digital Early American Newspapers database—the validity of Avery’s thesis by examining coverage of one American war hero, during and after the War of 1812.

David Porter, Jr., was an American Navy officer who entered the Navy in 1798 and saw action in the Quasi-War with France and the Barbary Wars. When war was declared in 1812, Porter was promoted to captain in command of the USS Essex, a forty-six gun frigate. Porter has been the subject of military biographies but it is only through the eyes of contemporary newspaper coverage that his heroic and often exciting exploits can be best understood.

Welcome to The Readex Report

This online publication explores diverse aspects of digital historical collections and provides insight into web-based resources, including the Archive of Americana and Archive of International Studies.